Reporting spamming/protecting against spamming on USENET

Reporting spamming/protecting against spamming on USENET

[Steinar Bang]

Ted!

Can your package report spam to anyone on USENET?  Ie. is there a
cancelling agency somewhere that takes tips?

I'm trying to read gnu.emacs.help, and it would feel more satisfying
if my `M-d's were to help others (like the gmane ones eventually
will (again)). 

Does the spam package work for USENET?  Or is it email only?

The manual has this from your sample file:
     ;; all NNTP groups
     ;; autodetect spam with the blacklist and ham with the BBDB
     ((spam-autodetect-methods spam-use-blacklist spam-use-BBDB)
     ;; send all spam to the training group
      (spam-process-destination . "nnimap+mail.lifelogs.com:train"))

     ;; only some NNTP groups, where I want to autodetect spam
     ((spam-autodetect . t))

But I don't understand how this releates to USENET or the NNTP
backend...?  Unless `spam-autodetect-methods' is something that's NNTP
only?  The manual entries for `spam-autodetect-methods',
`spam-use-blacklist', and `spam-autodetect' doesn't seem to indicate
that it is...?

Re: Reporting spamming/protecting against spamming on USENET

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004, sb@dod.no wrote:

> Ted!

Hi!

> Can your package report spam to anyone on USENET?  Ie. is there a
> cancelling agency somewhere that takes tips?

The nature of Usenet is that it's decentralized and works by common
agreement.  Furthermore, cancelling any but your own articles is
considered more rude than spam itself, and you can't edit an article
without cancelling and reissuing it, so the answer basically is no.

Centralized places such as Gmane can be more aggressive.

> I'm trying to read gnu.emacs.help, and it would feel more satisfying
> if my `M-d's were to help others (like the gmane ones eventually
> will (again)).
> 
> Does the spam package work for USENET?  Or is it email only?

Reporting is done through spam-report.el.  If you can write a suitable
spam-report function, then people will be able to use it.  You could
submit the message to a spam clearing house, for example, and then
people can use that clearing house.  You could also submit the
originating server's IP to a DNSBL service and other people could use
that DNSBL service.  There is a newsgroup method (NOCeM IIRC) to do
this in a vaguely centralized fashion, but in my experience it's slow
and ineffective because Usenet is simply too large and there's too
much spam.

The spam.el package works for any Gnus group with the spam-autodetect
parameter (note it will work for nnrss, nntodo, whatever as well).
You can tell spam.el, by using this parameter as the manual sample
shows, to check all unseen articles in a group using the autodetect
methods.  Those articles found to be spam will be marked so.  That's
all spam-autodetect does.

When you exit the group, the usual spam.el backend processing is done
(this has nothing to do with spam-autodetect).  Here you can report
spam as per spam-report.el, or you can simply learn it for your own
bogofilter/whatever filters.  I use Bogofilter on the gnu.emacs.help
newsgroups and on my regular mail, and I train it with both newsgroup
spam and regular spam.  It works very well.  I should update the
manual example to my current setup one of these days, but it's really
not all that complicated and I keep tuning it.

Add spam-use-bogofilter to the spam-autodetect-methods from the
example and to the spam-process parameters for a newsgroup to get my
current setup in a nutshell.  FWIW, BBDB speeds up the spam check by
bypassing people I know and the blacklist is very ineffective.

> The manual has this from your sample file:
>      ;; all NNTP groups
>      ;; autodetect spam with the blacklist and ham with the BBDB
>      ((spam-autodetect-methods spam-use-blacklist spam-use-BBDB)
>      ;; send all spam to the training group
>       (spam-process-destination . "nnimap+mail.lifelogs.com:train"))
> 
>      ;; only some NNTP groups, where I want to autodetect spam
>      ((spam-autodetect . t))
> 
> But I don't understand how this releates to USENET or the NNTP
> backend...?  Unless `spam-autodetect-methods' is something that's NNTP
> only?  The manual entries for `spam-autodetect-methods',
> `spam-use-blacklist', and `spam-autodetect' doesn't seem to indicate
> that it is...?

It works in any Gnus group, and acts only on unseen articles when you
enter the group.  It's intended for read-only backends where you don't
have splitting, but nothing prevents its use in any other backends.

Ted

Re: Reporting spamming/protecting against spamming on USENET

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> "Ted Zlatanov" <tzz@lifelogs.com>:

> On Tue, 14 Dec 2004, sb@dod.no wrote:

>> Can your package report spam to anyone on USENET?  Ie. is there a
>> cancelling agency somewhere that takes tips?

> The nature of Usenet is that it's decentralized and works by common
> agreement.  Furthermore, cancelling any but your own articles is
> considered more rude than spam itself,

I used to think so, some years ago.  But that was before spam became
the nuisance it is today.

> and you can't edit an article without cancelling and reissuing it,
> so the answer basically is no.

OK.  Thanx!

Re: Reporting spamming/protecting against spamming on USENET

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> "Ted Zlatanov" <tzz@lifelogs.com>:

> On Tue, 14 Dec 2004, sb@dod.no wrote:
>> The manual has this from your sample file:
>> ;; all NNTP groups
>> ;; autodetect spam with the blacklist and ham with the BBDB
>> ((spam-autodetect-methods spam-use-blacklist spam-use-BBDB)
>> ;; send all spam to the training group
>> (spam-process-destination . "nnimap+mail.lifelogs.com:train"))
>> 
>> ;; only some NNTP groups, where I want to autodetect spam
>> ((spam-autodetect . t))

>> But I don't understand how this releates to USENET or the NNTP
>> backend...?  

> It works in any Gnus group, and acts only on unseen articles when
> you enter the group.  It's intended for read-only backends where you
> don't have splitting, but nothing prevents its use in any other
> backends.

What I meant to say was that I didn't understand what exactly it was
in the example, that said that these settings applied to NNTP groups.

Or are these settings that are supposed to be added to a group's
parameters? 

Thanx!

Re: Reporting spamming/protecting against spamming on USENET

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no>:

>>>>> "Ted Zlatanov" <tzz@lifelogs.com>:
>> On Tue, 14 Dec 2004, sb@dod.no wrote:
>>> The manual has this from your sample file:
>>> ;; all NNTP groups
>>> ;; autodetect spam with the blacklist and ham with the BBDB
[snip!]
>>> But I don't understand how this releates to USENET or the NNTP
>>> backend...?

>> It works in any Gnus group, and acts only on unseen articles when
>> you enter the group.  It's intended for read-only backends where
>> you don't have splitting, but nothing prevents its use in any other
>> backends.

> What I meant to say was that I didn't understand what exactly it was
> in the example, that said that these settings applied to NNTP groups.

> Or are these settings that are supposed to be added to a group's
> parameters? 

They are.

I missed this bit from the example:
     ;; my parameters, set with `G p'

It would be nice if these parameters could be set on the server.
Either from the server buffer, or from the .gnus.el file.

Re: Reporting spamming/protecting against spamming on USENET

[Reiner Steib]

On Sun, Mar 06 2005, Steinar Bang wrote:

> I missed this bit from the example:
>      ;; my parameters, set with `G p'
>
> It would be nice if these parameters could be set on the server.
> Either from the server buffer, or from the .gnus.el file.

Setting them in ~/.gnus.el via `gnus-parameters' should work.

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Can't mark spam in NNTP group (Was: Reporting spamming/protecting against spamming on USENET)

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no>:

> I missed this bit from the example:
>      ;; my parameters, set with `G p'

Now, I've tried setting the following in the group parameters of
gnu.emacs.help: 

(((spam-autodetect-methods spam-use-blacklist spam-use-BBDB)
  (spam-process-destination . "nnml:train"))
 ((spam-autodetect . t)))

The hope was that articles marked with M-d would be copied to
nnml:train when I exited gnu.emacs.help.

But that doesn't happen.

Am I missing some setup?

These are my spam settings from ~/.gnus.el:

;; Handy spam reporting from Gnus
(require 'spam)
(require 'spam-report)

Thanx!

Re: Can't mark spam in NNTP group

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no>:

>>>>> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no>:
>> I missed this bit from the example:
>> ;; my parameters, set with `G p'

> Now, I've tried setting the following in the group parameters of
> gnu.emacs.help: 

> (((spam-autodetect-methods spam-use-blacklist spam-use-BBDB)
>   (spam-process-destination . "nnml:train"))
>  ((spam-autodetect . t)))

> The hope was that articles marked with M-d would be copied to
> nnml:train when I exited gnu.emacs.help.

> But that doesn't happen.

> Am I missing some setup?
[snip!]

Now I've added the rest from the config example in the manual, except
for the nnml mail split stuff, and put it in my ~/.gnus.el:

;; Handy spam reporting from Gnus
(require 'spam)
(require 'spam-report)
(require 'gnus-registry)
(gnus-registry-initialize)
(spam-initialize)
(setq
 spam-log-to-registry t     ; for spam autodetection
 spam-use-BBDB t
 spam-use-regex-headers t   ; catch X-Spam-Flag (SpamAssassin)
 ;; all groups with `spam' in the name contain spam
 gnus-spam-newsgroup-contents
 '(("spam" gnus-group-spam-classification-spam))
 ;; see documentation for these
 spam-move-spam-nonspam-groups-only nil
 spam-mark-only-unseen-as-spam t
 spam-mark-ham-unread-before-move-from-spam-group t)

I get the following in *Messages* after spam marking an article in
gnu.emacs.help, and then exiting the group:
 Exiting summary buffer and applying spam rules
 Registering 1 specific articles as spam using backend spam-use-move
 1 spam messages were registered by backend spam-use-move.
 No more unread newsgroups

But nnml:train still doesn't contain any articles.

Re: Can't mark spam in NNTP group

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Mon, 11 Apr 2005, sb@dod.no wrote:

>>>>>> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no>:
> 
>>>>>> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no>:
>>> I missed this bit from the example:
>>> ;; my parameters, set with `G p'
> 
>> Now, I've tried setting the following in the group parameters of
>> gnu.emacs.help: 
> 
>> (((spam-autodetect-methods spam-use-blacklist spam-use-BBDB)
>>   (spam-process-destination . "nnml:train"))
>>  ((spam-autodetect . t)))

I think your parenthesis are not right.  You want:

 ((spam-autodetect-methods spam-use-blacklist spam-use-BBDB)
  (spam-process-destination . "nnml:train")
  (spam-autodetect . t))

Better yet, use `G c' the first time you customize the parameters to
be sure they are correct.

> I get the following in *Messages* after spam marking an article in
> gnu.emacs.help, and then exiting the group:
>  Exiting summary buffer and applying spam rules
>  Registering 1 specific articles as spam using backend spam-use-move
>  1 spam messages were registered by backend spam-use-move.
>  No more unread newsgroups
> 
> But nnml:train still doesn't contain any articles.

Looks OK, but there's no destination for the spam (see above), so
spam-use-move does nothing.  When you fix the parameters you'll
probably have better luck with autodetection and exit processing.

Good luck
Ted

Re: Can't mark spam in NNTP group

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> "Ted Zlatanov" <tzz@lifelogs.com>:

> I think your parenthesis are not right.  You want:

>  ((spam-autodetect-methods spam-use-blacklist spam-use-BBDB)
>   (spam-process-destination . "nnml:train")
>   (spam-autodetect . t))

That was it.  Thanx!

> Better yet, use `G c' the first time you customize the parameters to
> be sure they are correct.

Thanx for the tip!  I removed the existing parameters, and used `G c'
to set them up.

Now it seems to be working (well... at least the reported spam is
moved/copied to the nnml group).